Possible electrical conductivity problem..

[Lufusol]

I let my goop touch another component, now I'm afraid to boot without learning more.

My board is an IS7, here is a picture of an IS7-G (close enough) which you will need to look at to see what I'm talking about:

http://www.ixbt.com/mainboard/...undup2/is7-g-board.jpg

In the upper right, above the row of capacitors, look for the second mosfet from the right, sandwiched between those two copper-wrapped donut things (bear with me). As you can see, that copper is hovering right over the damn mosfet, and if you had a better angle, you could see that one of the wraps almost touches its surface. For that reason I had to dremel out a corner of the sink I glued down. But the goop spread and touched the copper wire anyway.

The goop is made of about a 3:5 ratio of generic white paste to thin, quickset epoxy. Is there a chance this will be (electrically) conductive? If so, will it matter?

Sorry for the n00b-esque question, but I've been a theory/software guy for a long time, and know very little about actual electronics. I'm afraid to just power the thing up and see what happens. I think the heatsink and goop are otherwise isolated, so I can't think of a reason for electrons to travel away from the copper, but then, if I was so sure I wouldn't be asking

Thanks in advance for any help!

-Luf

 

[DyslexicHobo]

Link doesn't work.

 

[deadken]

I would think a ~$15 Volt/Ohm Meter from your local Radio Shack would answer your question better then we could...

 

[Lufusol]

My father's got one of those and he lives nearby. I'll go borrow it, but what am I looking for (other than the obvious conductivity between point A and point B)? I don't know anything about the "copper donut" component, how much voltage or amperage or ohms or whatever I should be running through it to adequately test..... like I said, I know very little about electronics. It's not necessary to my expertise, but it's certainly becoming relevant in my hobby life! If you can help me rectify my ignorance I would greatly appreciate it.

-Luf

 

[Lufusol]

Ok. Continuity tester shows 2 facts:

1) No matter how hard I try, I cannot get it to show continuity between some exposed metal on the heatsink and the coil (formerly known as "copper donut thing", thanks dad).
2) No matter how hard I try, I cannot get it to show continuity between the coil and any other place along the coil. Are coils usually laminated?

edit: the link doesn't work if you click it because of the referrer. Anandtech added the ... because the URL was too long or something, so you can't select and copy the text you see either. Try right clicking, "copy link location" (or similar) and pasting that into your address bar. Failing that, it's the first image Google image search finds when you type in "abit is7" (as of this post, anyway).

 

[gururu]

epoxy and silicon paste should not be electrically conductive. rather they should act as an electrical insulator.

 

[Lufusol]

That is awesome, thanks!. Glad you identified it as silicon, and not some arctic silver knockoff with metal filings in it. :Q Also glad I didn't put that crap on my CPU (or waste my Ceramique on the heatsinks, cause it took the whole tube to mix in proportion with the epoxy that shot out when I started)

Under a magnifying glass it looks like the copper is laminated, maybe burned off at the solder points during manufacturing. Cool.

Thanks for your help. Fancy new northbridge cooler coming in a couple days, Swiftech somethin er other so I think I'll use this computer a few days and leave the other one gutted till it arrives.

-Luf

 

[Jeff7]

Originally posted by: Lufusol
My father's got one of those and he lives nearby. I'll go borrow it, but what am I looking for (other than the obvious conductivity between point A and point B)? I don't know anything about the "copper donut" component, how much voltage or amperage or ohms or whatever I should be running through it to adequately test..... like I said, I know very little about electronics. It's not necessary to my expertise, but it's certainly becoming relevant in my hobby life! If you can help me rectify my ignorance I would greatly appreciate it.

-Luf

I believe those are called "chokes" - a kind of inductor designed to help smooth out power flow.